The Tuscan Response

This effectively ended Finch’s line of attack. Yet for all its cogency, Luci’s memorandum contains a striking and revealing omission: not once does it mention the case of the Alice and Francis, the original spur for English complaint. This approach would not have been so strange had Finch not blatantly misreported the case in his original memorandum, a thing which could have been easily rebutted with reference to the original files. It is rendered still stranger by the fact that Luci did in fact use archival documents in his rebuttal. Finch had claimed that the Alice and Francis had been awarded a GA of 1,800 pieces, ‘for the consumption of powder’ used in the fight with the Algerians.4 ASF, MM, 358-17, John Finch to Cosimo III (4 February 1671). It is not clear from the letter whether the point at issue was the admission of powder itself, or rather the quantity that had been claimed, or both. Luci was not to know that powder would have been admitted in England too, but he tackled the question of admissibility by attaching a list of precedents from the Consular archive which showed that the repartitioning of combat expenses via GA was standard practice.5 ASF, MM, 358-17, 26-9. He did not, however, use the Consular archive to disprove Finch’s contention that 1,800 pieces of eight had been spent on powder in the case of the Alice and Francis. This would indeed have been an absurd expense for powder alone, enough for any would-be Guy Fawkes to blow up the Houses of Parliament three times over.6 The gunpowder plotters reckoned that 36 barrels or maybe less would be sufficient. See ‘The Gunpowder Plot’, Encyclopedia Brittanica, <www.britannica.com/event/Gunpowder-Plot> [accessed 18 August 2021]. At the price on the expenses claim submitted by the officers of the Alice and Francis themselves (ASP, CM, 321-30, List of Expenses, £4 a barrel), 1,800 pieces of eight would have fetched 101 barrels of gunpowder. This figure has been obtained using a conversion rate of 1 piece to 4 shillings and 6 pence obtained from N.G. Merchant, The Compleat Tradesman, or The Exact Dealers Daily Companion (London: John Dunton, 1684), p. 173; Addobbati and Dyble, ‘One hundred barrels’, p. 825. When we examine the original files, however, we learn that powder was only part of the expense claim. The award, 1,875 pieces, 12 scudi, and 10 denari to be precise, not including 60 pieces in administrative costs, was not just for powder and shot expended, but also for damage to the ship, and compensation paid to the master and crew in recognition of their exertions and injuries sustained. In the master’s estimation of damages submitted to the Consoli in August 1670, the consumption of powder and shot was estimated at £106 and 14 shillings, or approximately 536 pieces of eight: no more than a quarter of the total awarded.7 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30, List of Expenses. Whether this was Finch’s exaggeration or misrepresentation by the London merchants, the idea that the Alice and Francis had claimed 1,800 pieces for the consumption of powder was simply not true. And yet Luci chose not to bring the relevant evidence to light.

The reason for Tuscan diffidence soon becomes clear when we turn to the documents themselves. The case is a veritable Pandora’s box of irregularities, which Luci, as a former chancellor of the court, knew better than to open.8 Addobbati and Dyble, ‘One hundred barrels of gunpowder’, p. 828. We have already seen in Chapter 3 how the ‘appearance’ of the master before the Consoli was often no more than a legal fiction. Stephen Dring could not possibly have come before the Consoli on 20 August, as the testimoniale maintained, because the permission from the Magistrato di Sanità in Florence recognising the validity of his clean bill of health from the authorities in Alicante and therefore granting him permission to disembark was signed the next day.9 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30 (30 August 1670), Testimoniale; ASL, Sanità, 68-338, Panciatichi to Serristori (21 August 1670); Addobbati and Dyble, ‘One hundred barrels of gunpowder’, p. 830. While there may conceivably have been some laxity in the enforcement of the rules preventing masters from disembarking before receipt of the license, travel to another city in order to present oneself before a court of law would have been out of the question.

But this was only the first in a series of questionable procedural elisions. Of more concern to the English would have been the differences in content of the consolato which had been created in Alicante, and the contents of the testimoniale presented by some person other than Master Dring to the Consoli in Pisa. The Italian translation of the original consolato, made before Don Alexandro Pasqual, Assessor of the Baile of Alicante, states how the ship had left Gravesend on 27 July 1670.10 Addobbati and Dyble, ‘One hundred barrels of gunpowder’, p. 829. Off the coast of Portugal, at a latitude of 43.5 degrees, the ship had been caught in ‘a great storm of strong wind’, with the sea striking the ship’s sides and entering the hold.11 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30 (30 August 1670), Consolato. The storm lasted 24 hours and the ship took on ‘much water, which we were constantly having to bail out with the pump, and I carried on my journey continuing to bail out’.12 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30 (30 August 1670), Consolato. The change of person midway through the narrative is typical of the consolati. When the ship met with the fleet of Algerian corsairs, therefore, it was already in a bad way. After a stop at Cadiz, the ship entered the Mediterranean and near the Cabo di Gatt they were set upon by ‘seven Moorish vessels of war, which we fought, my own ship and those others of my convoy, until six hours later, that is 10 o’ clock in the evening’.13 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30 (30 August 1670), Consolato. Dring recalled that ‘with the motion of the artillery, my aforementioned ship was taking on much more water than before, which we continued to extract with the pumps, and finding myself free from them, I continued my journey for this city [Alicante]’.14 Ibid. Dring’s reference to the ‘motion of the artillery’ (moto dell’artiglierie) suggests that the damage received was primarily from the explosive force of his own cannons recoiling, rather than blows received directly from the enemy. This version of events was repeated word for word by the three witnesses, all of whom described themselves as helmsmen (nocchieri): George Bumpt, Buiardi Lestoch, and Carlos Dickinfield.

The testimoniale, however, had quite a different story to tell. Here, there is no mention of the storm off Portugal. The account skips straight to the combat, which is now described in much more dramatic terms. Rather than meeting ‘seven Moorish vessels of war’ the English convoy was set upon by ‘seven ships, formidable Algerian corsairs’:

The difference between the two documents is an excellent illustration of the master’s ability to manipulate the information on which a GA judgement was based, and of the court’s willingness to couch the request in the appropriate terms. The differences between the two accounts can be easily explained with reference to the norms separating Particular Average (PA) and GA. In creating the original consolato, Dring’s prime concern appears to have been to absolve himself of any responsibility for potential damage to the cargo. As the document itself remarks: ‘It is suspected that for reason of the said storm and battle that the cargo of my ship may have suffered damage, notwithstanding that to repair it my mariners and I have carried out every possible diligence’.16 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30 (30 August 1670), Consolato. The principal object was to excuse himself for any deterioration of the merchandise, the extent of which would only become clear when the cargo was unloaded. It is possible that the idea of declaring a GA had not even occurred to Dring at this point. The testimoniale, on the other hand, was clearly aimed at triggering a GA declaration. Since non-voluntary damages received as the result of a storm could not be admitted in GA and might cast confusion on which damages were eligible for reimbursement, any reference to it was removed. A suggestion that the ship was already in a bad state prior to the battle might suggest liability: hence the reference to the motion of the cannons straining the timbers was also removed. This was especially important in the case of the Alice and Francis, a ship with its best years behind it: at least 13 years old at the time of the accident, it would be repurposed as a Royal Navy fire ship two years later – a disposable flaming hulk to be pushed into the oncoming enemy fleet.17 The earliest mention of the Alice and Francis is found in an interrogation of George Ravenscroft, an English merchant in Venice, which was carried out by the Inquisition in order to obtain information on the arrival of a certain Quaker preacher. Ravenscroft admitted that the preacher had touched at Venice while travelling to the Ottoman Empire, where she had hoped to have an audience with the Sultan: the resident had sent her back to England. The ship on which she had arrived was the Alice and Francis, on its way to Constantinople. Kenneth Carroll, ‘Quakers in Venice, 1657–8’, Quaker History 92 (2003), 22–31, at p. 27; Henry Cadbury, ‘Friends and the Inquisition at Venice, 1658’, The Journal of the Friends Historical Society 52 (1968), 39–45, at p. 43; Stefano Villani, Tremolanti e papisti: missioni quacchere nell’Italia del Seicento (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1996), p. 95. On the ship’s later career as a fire ship, see Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the reign of Charles II, vol. 12, pp. 169, 405; vol. 15, pp. 98, 100, 114, 125, 349. The reference to their inability to flee, moreover, reinforces the sense of stark choice presented to the master: either fight, with all the risks and damages that entailed, or be captured with the complete loss of ship, cargo, and crew. The reference to the valour of the mariners and the injury to the master paved the way to the receipt of compensations for their exertions and sacrifices. The broadening of hull damage to encompass damage to all parts of the ship anticipated a reimbursement which might not only cover damage actually received in the combat, but any defect whatsoever in the ship’s structure. Once again, Ascanio Baldassaroni’s remark is brought to mind: through GA, masters were repeating the trick of the Galley of Salamis, which had ostensibly remained a thousand years in perfect condition while all the component parts were quietly replaced.18 Baldasseroni, Delle assicurazioni marittime, vol. 3, p. 15.

The most generous interpretation we can give of the testimoniale is that it was replete with exaggeration and disingenuous omission. The differences between the two documents should have given the judges pause for thought. In the event, however, the entire case took only ten days to be concluded: the testimoniale was submitted on 20 August and the Consoli had approved the final calculation by 31 August (itself a rebuttal of Finch’s claim that Tuscan cases took far too long to process).19 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30 (30 August 1670), Consolato; Testimoniale. This swift expedition was facilitated in part by the practice of ‘self-assessment’ which we have already encountered at the end of Chapter 3. In his response to Finch’s letter, Luci pointed out that, if the English had their way, the ‘experts’ of one court might make a different estimation of the damages to the experts of another court, creating confusion and contention.20 ASF, MM, 358-17, Emilio Luci to Cardinal Leopoldo de Medici (6 April 1671). In this case, however, the account of the damages was not made by experts at all, but submitted directly by the master. As a legal document with probative value, it ought to have been presented to a notary before submission to the court. In the event, it was simply signed by ship’s officers: Isack Shiltons, carpenter, Thomas Whincop, boatswain, Charles Durkenfelds, gunner, and several others.21 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30 (30 August 1670), List of Expenses. They declared damage to the ship of £353, 14 shillings, which included the £106, 14 shillings for powder and shot expended, as well as damage to the hull, cabins, sails, rigging, and the value of things thrown overboard in preparation for combat. Nor was this the only example of the master and crew calling the shots rather than the Tuscan authorities. In Dring’s testimoniale, he had already specified the amount he felt was fair as compensation for his arm: 140 pieces.22 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30 (30 August 1670), Testimoniale.

Though the Consoli made a show of tempering the request, in reality the effect of this was negligible. In their judgement, the Consoli declared that they would award a ‘reduced’ amount of 1,875 pieces, 10 soldi, and 12 denari.23 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30 (30 August 1670), Calculation. Once the discretionary gift and compensation to the master are removed, which were not included in the self-assessment, we are left with 1,490 pieces, 12 soldi, 10 denari. The officers of the Alice and Francis had estimated the remaining expenses at £353, 14 soldi. Using the near-contemporary conversion rate of 54 pence to each piece, this worked out as 1,572 pieces: the Consoli had reduced the request by a mere 81 pieces, a reduction of just over 5 per cent.24 Using conversion rate of 4 shillings and 6 pence per piece obtained from Merchant, The Compleat Tradesman, p. 173. The rhetoric of the judgement thus suggested a careful process of probity and judgement in the interests of equity. In the event, however, the result was more or less what the officers of the Alice and Francis had originally demanded.

A similar dynamic can be observed in the representation offered to the absent merchants. Livorno was not the only scheduled stop on the journey of the Alice and Francis. According to the calculation, only 31.3 per cent of the cargo, as measured by value, was destined for Livorno. The rest was destined for Naples (21%), Messina (42.2%) and Izmir (5.4%).25 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30 (30 August 1670), Calculation. As such, the majority of merchants were not based in Livorno, but elsewhere. To reflect this, a curatore was appointed who could represent the interests of the absent interested parties. The choice of the court in the case of the Alice and Francis fell upon one Michele Moneta. This character was certainly no stranger to the Consoli, since we later find him attesting a citation in the position of vice-chancellor of the court.26 ASP, CM, AC, 322-16 (9 November 1670); ASP, CM, AC, 322-27 (9 December 1670). No interrogatories were produced, and, as such, the curatore’s objections represent the only scrutiny offered of Dring’s narrative. In his exceptions, Moneta railed rhetorically against the ‘null and invalid request’, which he solemnly promised to oppose in ‘beginning, middle, and end’, refusing to validate ‘even one of the intentions of the present adversary’. He then made the following objections: that the things related in the testimoniale were not true; that the master had not made his request in the proper form; and that he had not proved that the consolato was true, but had rather done everything fraudulently.27 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30 (30 August 1670), Exceptions. That is to say, he made the most bombastic and least specific objections he possibly could have done. These three objections padded out numerous exceptions: they were entirely standard and, thus, fairly meaningless.28 E.g. ASP, CM, AC, 320-7, Exceptions; ASP, CM, AC, 197-29 (26 April 1640); ASP, CM, AC, 196-37 (2 January 1639). The irony, of course, is that the first two objections were true: the master had not made his request in the proper form, not being present before the Consoli as his testimoniale had claimed. The testimoniale, meanwhile, contained several untruths, or was at least so economical with the facts that it amounted to a deception. But in neither case did Moneta refer to the testimoniale itself to back up his assertions. It is clear that it was not his intention to expose these inconvenient truths. He did not offer any comment on the damages requested by the English master or their quantities, not once citing specific details of the case. His were objections that might be made in any GA case, indeed, to almost any case coming before the Consoli. Once again, we see lip service paid to judicial rigour and due process, but little in the way of concrete opposition to Dring’s request.

In the light of this lack of scrutiny, Finch’s accusations begin to seem somewhat plausible. The Pisan Consoli do indeed appear to have readily agreed to Stephen Dring’s ‘pretensions’. What is more, Dring seems to have specifically chosen Livorno as the place in which to demand GA. The most damaging thing to emerge from examination of the documentation is the fact that the ship had a scheduled stop at Alicante, where the original consolato was done, and yet still chose to carry out the GA at Livorno. This fact is glossed over in the testimoniale: Alicante does not appear in the list of scheduled ports. The Alice and Francis departs London with a cargo of ‘diverse merchandise’, ‘part for Livorno, part for Naples, Messina, and Izmir’, with Alicante nowhere to be found.29 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30 (30 August 1670), Testimoniale. The only thing done in Alicante, according to the testimoniale, was the making of the consolato. The consolato, however, very clearly states that Dring loaded cargo for ‘this city [i.e. Alicante], Livorno, Messina, and other places’.30 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30 (30 August 1670), Consolato. The witnesses likewise confirm this fact. This omission was more than poor form: the result was unjust, placing a greater burden on the shoulders of those merchants with cargo for Izmir and the ports of the Italian peninsula, while the Alicante merchants were – literally – let off scot-free.31 Gerard Malynes writes that Average was known by some in England as ‘scot and lot’. These were community dues for church building, wall maintenance, poor relief, and the like. Malynes, Consuetudo vel lex mercatoria, p. 157. See Danby P. Fry, ‘On the phrase “Scot and Lot”’, Transactions of the Philological Society 12 (1867), 167–97. The cargo of the Alicante receivers had been saved by the ‘sacrifice’ of the combat, and yet they had not been required to pay towards the damages. The exact impact of this omission is impossible to quantify since, unsurprisingly, the cargo for Alicante was not included on the calculation contained in the file.